Question about Music

I am asking this on behalf of my music loving daughter. I am turning over control of the keyboard.

Though I am not the skating junkie my dearly beloved mother is, I am a fan. Looking over mom's shoulder as she watches vids of the greats (and atrocities), I've noticed that many skate to Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto. However, I've noticed that they tend to stick to the first two movements, but never the ecstatic third. I'm curious if anyone has, in fact, skated to the third movement and if they might happen to have a recording of the performance. It would be interesting to see.

Also, who cuts the skating music, in general? Yes, I realize that skating to an entire piece would take up far more time than allowed. But I've noticed that many cuts are poorly done - choppy. Very very choppy. Painfully, agonizingly choppy with little in the way of flow.

Thanks in advance for any information you could bestow upon me as to this topic. I am now turning over the controls to my mother, bless her soul.

Great question - can't answer. I too often wonder why the edits are so poor. My guess as to a short answer: music (or at least musical quality, including innovation) is a low priority. Otherwise, we wouldn't have Carmen & Swan Lake up the wazoo, year after year. I wish COP would give points for musical selection and editing.

I think the organizations using the likes of "iSkate" and such need to step up the quality. I have been matching Fumie's SP at Olys to the two Jesse Cook tunes and It was done very poorly, the beat is often changed and edits are choppy. Of course did I notice with the commentators and audience noise? Nop'

So my thought had been "does no one really care?", yet now I hear someone dose

I will post what I have latter so you can see what I mean. I think they could do a much better job with this as well. I KNOW I could. Most of the difficulty for me would be to know, do you match the music to the routine (follow a basic pro element layout) or the routine to the music????

I think the problem with a lot of music edits is simply that the person doing it is not very musical, and if the skater also doesn't have a good ear for music, they're not going to notice or care very much. I'm a trained musician, and always do the cuts for my daughter. Her current long program uses 9 tracks off the CD and has 13 cuts, but you don't notice because I made sure the overall program made musical sense (it's a movie soundtrack, which is why this works - there probably couldn't be so many cuts otherwise). It's not easy, especially when you're trying to take program needs into consideration. She sketches out the order she wants the elements to come (of course, her coach has something to say about this, too), and I cut the music so that it can work out that way. A former coach of hers preferred to cut the music himself, because he choreographed the program as he went. Luckily, he was very musical, so I had no problem letting him do it, especially since it was important to his creative process. Her programs have been done both ways - cut the music first and make the routine to fit it, or sketch out the routine first and cut the music to match. Both approaches have their difficulties. At the lower levels it really isn't that big a deal, but international competitors should really have their music done by someone who knows what they're doing, in my opinion. Some music, unfortunately, just can't be sensibly cut, which may be why we hear the same old stuff all the time - easier to go with something known to work.

I've noticed that many skate to Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto. However, I've noticed that they tend to stick to the first two movements, but never the ecstatic third. I'm curious if anyone has, in fact, skated to the third movement and if they might happen to have a recording of the performance. It would be interesting to see.

Meno and Sand used the 3rd movement for their 97 LP. I couldn't find a clip on YouTube. Unfortunately, they never performed this program well in competition. They came in 2nd at Nationals that year behind I/D. At Worlds they in 4th after the SP and in contention for a medal. Unfortunately, they had a lackluster performance and fell to 5th.

I think Midori Ito also used parts of the 3rd movement for her 92 Olympic LP, although the first section was set to Rach's 1st piano concerto. I need to pull that tape to verify.

It is really to bad, I like Jesse Cook and thought it might be nice to listen to the mixed version for her SP just as a listen. But it drops beats, interrupts rhythm, fades at strange times, etc.... It just does not seem to have the integrity something, particularly for the Olys, should have.

The boarders on the side are some ideas I was having for the TES to come up on - as the scores came in - the left. The name(s) of the element(s) on the bottom with the running total of points adding as the individual scores came up for each element on the left.
If any of you "judges" want to submit their own scores for each "scoreable" element in this pro, I will happily add them in and post this if I get 4-5 - I could put my own in, but with my "Fumie goggles" I think I might score a little high so it would be best there are some realistic scores. I guess I could use the "real" scores given, but where is the fun in that.(still haven't gotten to that yet, wouldn't mind GS scores for this if you members want, acutely might be more fun)

"Back in the day" choreographers and coaches had to splice their music cuts together with nothing more than a pair of tape recorders. Now that professional quality digital equipment is available to anyone off the shelf at Radio Shack, it does seem like skaters and their advisors should be getting better at it.

Lori Nicole is one choreographers known for great music mixes.

About Rachmaninov's piano concerto number two, maybe skaters figure, if I'm going to go with this glorious old chestnut I might as well go for the magnificent if familiar theme of the second movement. The same reason that anyone who skates to Turandot uses Nessun Dorma.

Many concertos are like this. The weight of piece is in the second movement, and the third is a palate cleansing romp to the finish. The third movements would make great skating music.

That is what I gathered from some comments, but if the SP at OLYs was any sign of her work, I would hope that was not a standard in this "age." I still haven't heard from you on video issues MM so I don't know if you have watched and listened - and there is the chance that some sound editing is not audible - but I was not impressed by anything but the choice of good music. Also notice the music at the 2:14 mark. ?????? I thought Jupiter was awesome (but haven't tried matching the music mix) so I am sure she is doing things I have no Idea why, but dare I say, I would expect better from the days the 4 track was made available for under 500 bucks - no software at all. Also reel-to-reel has been.... blaa blaa..

Anyway, do they ever ask a person with "more talent" at mixing for a hand?

Some music simply lends itself to good editing. For example, the music of Paganini ( Erin Pearl's long program) is a brilliant collection with just enough pause to edit. Other good music choices for up and coming skaters are:

1. Butterfly Lovers
2, West Side Story
3, Don Quijote
4. My Family Soundtrack ( I dd the choreography on this one for a skater, the program was AMAZING)
5. Legends of the Fall soundtrack
6. Carmen
7. Concerto de Arenuet
8. Debussy
9. Henry V
10. The Mission

The key I think is to find soundtracks or concertos with lots of change in beat and mood, which allows for slow and fast parts of the program and for spins. Im always listening for good skating music, especially uncommon music, which i think also ups the artistic impression

A choreographer, how interesting. If you felt like starting a thread and sharing some of your experience and knowledge, I would certainly enjoy reading it. The question of whether there can be high-scoring COP programs that are also varied and lovely to watch comes up all the time!

Skaters like Jeff Buttle choose their music wisely and have a really good music editor work on joining pieces together. Some skaters are not so lucky. Sometimes their coach will choose the music and sadly not do a proper editing job or even choose a poor rendition of a piece. The music can make or break the program. It's very important and skaters and coaches should really pay attention to this detail.